10 May 2009
Jorge Meacuterida Peacuterez
Shooting
Jorge Meacuterida Peacuterez, of national daily Prensa Libre, who was shot dead at his home in Coatepeque, Quetzaltenango department in the west of the country on 10 May.
The 40-year-old, whose family said he had recently been threatened, was the second journalist to be murdered in Guatemala since the start of the year.
Mérida Pérez was sitting at his computer working on an article, when an unidentified assailant on a motorbike parked outside his home and entered the house, the front door of which had been left open. He fired four shots at the journalist, who was hit in the face and died instantly. His son, Jorge Luis, aged 14, who was in the next room, was unhurt.
Police were said by the Guatemala press to be pursuing two leads unconnected with the journalist’s work: one of a crime of passion and the second of possible revenge by a local armed group. His family said that the journalist had recently received threats, but it was not known who was behind them.
